Comments on: Russian tensions add a sharper edge to EELV hearing

By: Beacon

Beacon — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 01:18:09 +0000

I didn’t say there weren’t, aren’t, and won’t be slips in the rocket business, Mader. What I am saying is that customers aren’t ambivalent about those delays.

By: Beacon

Beacon — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 01:12:04 +0000

Nobody said there weren’t, aren’t, and won’t be slips mint

By: Mader Levap

Mader Levap — Sat, 15 Mar 2014 16:44:00 +0000

BS. Slips were, are and will be in rocket business, including launching national security payloads.

By: Beacon

Beacon — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 14:26:23 +0000

Neil Shipley, comments by random, uninformed, Elon fan boys have little bearing on the reality of the situation. Statements by the General currently in charge of AF Space Command certainly do. There’s a big difference between sending ice cream to astronauts and putting multi-$100 mil national assets into space. Shelton was merely stating that distinction, thank goodness Michael Kent gets the picture. However, that picture will likely soon change. SpaceX will work their way into higher class payloads (perhaps the highest class, humans), as the USAF and Govt in general are bending over backwards to get them involved in the rocket business.

Again, I use the term rocket business. Waiting around for a month for the launch vehicle to “ensure the bird gets safely to orbit” is for rocket science. SV providers in the rocket business would certainly “arc up”. That is a concrete fact only denied by random, uninformed, Elon fan boys.

By: Curtis Quick

Curtis Quick — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 04:51:40 +0000

If reliability is the issue, surely it is more reliable to depend on more than one provider for launch services. That way when one provider has an accident the other can pick up the slack. With only one provider, there would be an unacceptably long downtime after such an accident to understand what went wrong, to fix the problem, and to test the fix. During this downtime those defense dept. assets would just sit on the ground unlaunched. US defense department would certainly increase the likelihood of getting their assets launched into orbit if they worked with both ULA and SpaceX.

By: Michael Kent

Michael Kent — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 01:54:38 +0000

“Look for the general to pick up a cushy contractor job when he retires.”

Sheesh, people, get a grip. William Shelton is a SpaceX fan: â€œI donâ€™t doubt that guy [Elon Musk] anymore, by the way. What he says, heâ€™s going to do.â€

Just because he doesn’t award SpaceX contracts to do things they can’t do doesn’t mean he’s in the pay of their competition.

By: Michael Kent

Michael Kent — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 01:45:30 +0000

“Why do you say loses on #2?”

SpaceX was years late on the Cassiope, SES-8, and CRS launches, dwarfing any recent delay by ULA.

“Why do you consider 1 unproven?”

Because they’ve only launched their Falcon family 13 times with only 10 successes. In comparison, Delta/Thor/Atlas have had over 1000 successful flights among them.

Running the numbers, the predicted (Bayesian) reliability rate for the active SpaceX & ULA launch vehicles is:

.900 Falcon 9
.962 Delta IV
.977 Atlas V
.987 Delta II

Falcon 9 has a looooong way to go to match the latest ULA vehicles in that category.

Look, SpaceX shows great promise for the future, but its actual accomplishments to date pale in comparison to ULA’s and its predecessor companies. When the gov’t has to launch a payload costing as much as a new aircraft carrier, they’re going to take that into account. As they should.

By: Michael Kent

Michael Kent — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 01:27:33 +0000

“I do not recall did Lockheed and Boeing have the requirement that they had to launch three times FIRST to be qualified?”

Boeing had launched 100 Delta IIs successfully by the time of the first Delta IV launch. Even then that first launch was a commercial launch, not a gov’t launch.

Likewise Lockheed had launched 58 Atlas IIs and IIIs by the time of the first Atlas V launch, and the first five Atlas Vs were commercial launches.

Counting gov’t-launched vehicles, there were 529 successful pre-EELV Delta/Thor orbital launches and 284 successful pre-EELV Atlas orbital launches. There were an additional 277 successful sub-orbital launches of Thor & Atlas. That’s over 1000 successful launches among them.

Delta & Atlas are seasoned veterans while Falcon is a newbie. A newbie with great promise but still a newbie. Air Force policy accounts for that.

By: Neil Shipley

Neil Shipley — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 01:19:15 +0000

Hell yeah! Astronauts aren’t worth anywhere near the value of military satellites. There’s lots of astronauts looking for ‘work’ whereas military satellites take years of design and development and cost many hundreds of millions of dollars generally. It also seems that the often have specific and highly valuable capabilities, something that generally doesn’t apply to astronauts.

By: Neil Shipley

Neil Shipley — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 01:16:01 +0000

Yes interesting. So were the 3 comments attached to the article which I guess you didn’t read.

The certification requirements are 3 successful consecutive launches plus a bunch of paperwork and process verification. SpaceX has achieved the 3 flights (although only 1 certified as yet; other 2 perfect so no reason for not assuming they will be as well) and is well on the way to meeting the rest.

Shelton, although talking up the benefits of competition, has yet to embrace those words with actions. However, continuing budget reductions and the impacts of slipping their flights will result in reduced capability which they will only be able to sustain. Eventually they’re going to have to get price reductions one way or the other. In the meantime, SpaceX, unlike ULA, continues to increase their capability and drive toward further cost/price reductions.